Only seven were hanged
where she would have loved to go. She watched him go on these
occasions with regret. She knew that he was climbing toward the apex
of his career. His name was beginning to be talked about. She loved
that. She was proud of him. On his side he considered everything
coolly and dispassionately. His mind was alert, trained, capable.
He knew his way about the world. His professional knowledge stood
him in good stead. It held her and still allowed him the freedom he
required.
At the end of a year or so there came a revelation to her. Indeed,
two. The second was, in a way, the more terrible, for it deprived
her of the support she needed to face the first. She saw that he was
tiring of her.
She pleaded, appealed, asked for reasons, begged him to remember his
vows. It was all of no use whatever. He was cold, logical, without
alarm, without fear. He knew his ground. He was quite aware of
where he stood. He paid the rent up to a certain date, told her to
find a place by that time where she might live. On that day she
moved out to rooms which she had rented. He promised to visit her
there. He sold the furniture of the flat and went his way. He never
visited her at all.
[During this recital the judge had listened with patience, but now he
bent forward and remarked that so far he had not heard anything that
was triable matter. He did not wish to hurry the waiter, but let
them get to the legal issue as soon as possible. The waiter
continued without replying directly to the interruption:]
When she became a mother, she became an exile. An exile becomes
embittered, sometimes desperate. She became both. She wrote letters
to him, pleading letters, letters filled with touching memories
directed to stir the embers of his forgotten declarations. He did
not reply to them. But time and privation did not seem to kill her
love for him. She saw his name in the newspapers and cut out all the
extracts she came across. She fought against adversity as much as
she was able, writing to him at intervals----
["She ought to have applied to the courts under the Act providing for
illegitimate children," drawled the judge. "An order against the
father could have been obtained." The waiter answered quietly: "We
must allow for a shrinking sensitiveness that a betrayed girl may
possess. There are hundreds, nay, thousands such alive today."]
She obtained a minor position on the stage. Once from the wings she
observed him in the stalls, but when she emerged to the footlights
and their eyes met he pretended not to recognize her. She wrote him
that night. He replied this time, cold, formal, placing every legal
obstacle in the path of her request, disclaiming paternity of her
child. When she received this letter she was as one facing death.
She fell ill and lost her work.
Then followed a period of bitterness. He had taken from her more
than he knew. He had given her more than he anticipated. She
resolved to pursue him for the necessity of life as he had pursued
her for the desires of love. She wrote again, in the name of their
child, demanding help to bear her burden. She wrote again and again,
becoming more reckless, more unguarded in her words every time. At
length his answer came. She was arrested for attempted blackmail.
He was safely entrenched behind the habit of modern courts of
withholding from publicity the name of the person alleged to be
blackmailed. His professional status was high enough and strong
enough to hide his name. He made sure of his cover before he
launched the law against her. Public men shield public men. The
trial was short. She was sent to prison without her story becoming
known. It was all quite legal. His reason for this act was to make
it impossible for her ever to approach him. He had wiped her out.
Prison did not kill her, though it might have killed her. Her
suffering had a curious effect on her. It made her silent; but it
made her cunning. She seldom spoke. She obtained a job as a
wardrobe mistress in a touring company. By a strange coincidence
this company covered the same ground as the company in which she had
been a gay chorus girl. Every town at which the show was put on was
a crucifixion for her. She remembered every incident of her past,
she gazed in bitter-sweetness on the very flagstones where she had
met him, where she had stopped to read his letters sent to the
theaters; she recalled the phrases he had written, every phrase,
every incident, raising memories that tortured and almost suffocated
her.
One day she was in a town where his professional duties took him. He
was, in one sense, a public man. She went to hear his speech on this
occasion, hiding herself behind a pillar in the hall and hoping he
would not see her. She listened to his masterly handling of his
subject, she saw how he was able to sway the opinions, the
convictions, of others. But in her heart there was a terrible irony.
He was defending the actions of a man who had been guilty of conduct
similar to his own, and he was doing it by besmirching the name of a
woman.
[Here the judge bent forward and asked a question. "What did you say
was the profession of this man?" But the waiter apparently did not
hear, for he continued his story without even looking up.]
She never went to hear any more of his speeches. She never again
watched the newspapers for his name. She became more secretive than
ever, more cunning than ever. When the tour of her theatrical
company finished, she ceased all connection with the stage. She
devoted her time to educating her child, who had been until then in
the care of an acquaintance.
And now we must hasten to the climax of the tragedy. The struggle of
this woman became more internecine than ever. Her cares multiplied.
Her heart, already broken, barely served its natural purpose of
holding her life within her. Her spirits, long at zero, fell below
that point. The life that was in her was being crushed out as by a
terrible weight. Her physique gave way under the strain. Poverty
faced her.
Her child had never had any playmates, being attached to his mother
so closely that to be separated from her was painful. One evening,
in the gloom of their single, miserable room, lit by a candle, the
mother, who had been in bed for some days, called this little boy to
her and, putting her arm round his shoulders and holding her cheek
against his, began a long story. It was a terrible tale, her own
betrayal, her love, her shattered hopes, her disillusionment, her
desire for vengeance. She talked a long time, punctuating her story
with bursts of pitiful anguish and many tears. Who can ever know the
effect of that story on the child? His tears mingled with those of
his mother, his heart was consumed with awful urgings.
This story of woe was not only a confession of the past, it was a
confession of a wrong she had done against the law in the present.
She had stolen to live and she was faced with prison again. She had
written two letters, which lay, sealed in their envelopes, but
unstamped, on a table. One of these letters was addressed to the man
who had wronged her, the other was addressed to the police. She
asked her child to go out and put the letters in a mail-box. He
picked up the letters and left the room.
But he deceived his mother in this matter. Like all children, he
harbored a loyalty to his mother that nothing could shake. But he
also had endured enough to make him secretive. Perhaps this was
because he was sensitive. He went to the doorway leading to the
street, stayed there a few moments, and returned on tiptoe, hoping
that his mother was asleep. He peered through the hinge of the door.
He saw his mother pouring a liquid from a bottle into a tumbler which
she put on a table near her bed. Then she returned to her bed and
lay waiting for him. He stayed a little while before entering. When
he slipped into the room she was lying still, exhausted by her
efforts. He sat down by her bed, conscious that she was seriously
ill, bowed down by grief and despair.
His love for his mother bound him to the room. He sat there by the
wretched bed all night.
Before dawn she awoke from her slumber and drew him to her. She was
very pale, but she was still beautiful. She gazed on him for a long
time, then stretched out her hand to the tumbler, asking him to drink
some of the liquid first and saying that she would drink some after
him, for she was sure he was thirsty and she herself felt in need of
drink. But there was something strange in her manner, something that
frightened the boy. He assured her that he did not wish a drink.
She tried to coax him, but he still protested. She put down the
tumbler without taking any of the drink herself, but saying that they
would drink together in the morning. Then she lay back on her pillow
and appeared to sleep again.
The child was filled with uneasiness and a strange, unaccountable
apprehension. The story she had told him, the weariness of his
vigil, the dread of the future and privation of the past all stirred
within him. He began to think, so far as he was able. Gently he
loosened her arm which encircled him and stole over to the window,
looking out at the breaking day. He felt in his pocket for the
letters he had been asked to mail. He wondered if he had done wrong
to keep them. An idea came to him. He went softly out of the room
and down to the street.
He could read fairly well. He spelled out the address on the
envelope of one of the letters. He set out resolutely to walk to his
destination, which was a street in the rich quarter of the city.
The walk occupied about two hours. He asked his way many times.
Policemen and pedestrians directed him, the former looking at him
inquiringly; but the boy had learned the value of keeping knowledge
to himself and he never allowed anyone to see the letter nor gave a
clue as to his intention. At last he reached the house and presented
the letter. He was given a chair in the hall by a pompous servant.
The grandeur of the furnishings seemed to his child mind to speak of
a king's palace. It awed him, this magnificence.
He had to wait for some time, but at last a tall man came down and,
without a word, laid a hand on his shoulder and piloted him down the
front steps. A cab was hailed and they were driven through the
splendor of the West End toward the misery of the East End. When
they were in the cab the man asked a few questions of the boy; asked
them sharply and in a tone that was peremptory.
"What is your name?"
The child gave his Christian name.
"Has anyone seen this letter?"
"No."
"It was sealed when the woman gave it you?"
"Yes."
The boy pondered this word "woman" as applied to his mother. No more
questions were asked.
At a street corner they dismounted and walked the remainder of the
way, which was not very far. They entered the room, the man going
first, the boy at his heels. The boy saw that his mother was awake.
When she saw them she uttered a terrible cry. The man stood rigid,
regarding her without a word. The child looked from one to the
other, seeing expressions on both faces he could not comprehend. He
retreated, feeling that here were forces beyond his understanding,
cataclysmic revelations he could not fathom. He went out of the
room. But he peered through the opening of the door-hinge and he
listened.
"What brought you here?" asked the woman.
It was a few moments before the answer was given: "I got your letter
sooner than you expected, perhaps. Did you send it to me by hand?"
"It was to be posted. How did you get it?"
"That boy brought it."
The woman groaned.
"That is where he has been!" she cried. "But the police will then